Releasing the Genius

Doreathea Brande’s process from 1934 relies on what recently has been stated by linguist George Lakoff. The science of linguistics is catching up on the mystery, and mischievousness of metaphor and its intimate relationship to creative thought.

Lakoff suggests that metaphors consider language as a conduit, transferring thought bodily from one person to another. “. . . in writing, people insert their thoughts or feelings into words,” Lakoff says. Words accomplish the transfer by conveying thoughts and feelings to others, and receivers extract them once again from the words. The words are personalized, integrated into the individual reader, in essence rewriting the story to attend to their personal thematic metaphor, their sense of self.

In a psycho-linguistic nutshell: Communion is created between separates.

Here is the magic that Brande speaks of in scientific proof:

Metaphorical tension is born when the translation between word establish greater meaning and symbolism. This cross-mapping of the mind awakens and arouses the reader, invites them to extract meaning from the husk of imagery and higher realms.

May I suggest that if metaphor is the midwife of poetic gravity, then the imagination is its map. And, that inherent beauty and brilliance of metaphor is its power to evoke complex waves of emotion. What makes metaphor magical is that once you relate two separates, both are changed forever and multiply so. A new thing is created, thus metaphorical writing elicits a poignant response. The metaphorical grows in complexity, grows and layers and enfolds character, plot and setting lending a work of fiction worlds of meaning.

Story becomes a layered bastion of imagery, a benediction of graceful proportion. Imagination is at the origin of emerging meanings in language. It is the creative act itself that offers and projects itself into language, making metaphorizing a possibility.